question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Form the process of constructing this product I have learnt a lot about technologies.
We were taught how to set up equipment for the camera and sound beforehand, so that when it actually came to the day of filming we would know ho to use and set up the equipment. We also had a prelim task before the main task, this helped us because it gave us a taste of what will happen on the main task.
We used:
- A Canon XH A1, we had to learn how to use the camera, such as the on and off button, the zoom, how to put the battery in and take it out and how to put the tape in and take it out.
- The camera would be attached to a tripod. I had to take the tripod out of its bag, and then unscrew it so that I could extend it to my shoulder length.
- Then we had to attach the camera to the tripod, after doing so we had to sort the spirit level out so that the camera would not be slanted.
- We used an external microphone, although we did not need any natural sound we still used it just in case we needed it when it came to editing.

The camera was not light weight and not easily portable, so we had to be careful whilst using it, however it was easy to operate, this was because we had lessons on how to operate it, so by the time it came to filming on the day it was easy for us to operate the camera because we had had many lessons on it before. During filming we used tracks to track all the cast in the classroom scene.

For the sound equipment was very portable because it was light weight and therefore we could carry it wherever we wanted it. It took me a long time to actually learn how to operate the sound equipment, but I went to a lesson afterschool and at that point I learnt everything I didn’t know, and therefore it was easy for me to operate the camera on the day of the main task. We had a lot of sound interference on the day of filming, however after stopping many times and taking many shots we realised that there was no point of us stopping the filming because of sound interference because we didn’t even need sound in the film, because we would use non diagetic sound when editing.

After filming for one day and getting all the shots we needed, we had to start editing to assemble the sequence.
- We used Adobe Premier Pro for editing our film
- At the start we had to digitise our shots and then put them in order that it was meant to be on the film.
- After cutting out all the bits that were not needed by the razor tool, we had to look the right music that would suit our film. We had a lot of problems with this because the music had to be copyright free, when we found the website that would give us copyright free music we had to change the music many times because after audience feedback we would realise that those types of music were not right for our film, after many tries the majority of our audience feedback was good as they liked the music and they thought it went with the film, however there were still some people that did not like the music, but we realised that no matter how many times we tried we could not please everyone.

Once we finished everything the we watched over the sequence and we liked it, also the audience feedback was mainly good. However if I had the chance to do the editing again I would use more effects for the opening sequence because we didn’t use any effects.

Overall I believe that I have come far because I didn’t know how to use it at all at the beginning, and now I know a lot however I still do not know everything and I think I would improve a lot because we haven’t been using the camera and sound and the editing for a long time, we have only been using it from September therefore for me there are still a lot of improvements to be made. I especially need help in editing because I had to ask for help a few times.